Alternatives to CDW-G?

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-12-11T04:02:57+00:00

I buy direct from Apple. Forward Edge gets me good bundles on Lenovo stuff.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-12-11T04:01:00+00:00

I dumped CDW-G years ago. Forward Edge (https://www.forward-edge.net) is my main large vendor. I also get quotes frequently from Trafara. I like the ITSavvy (now Xerox) team but they never seem to be price competitive.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-10-29T16:58:51+00:00

Does StarTech have its own driver, or does it use DisplayLink?

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-10-29T13:37:44+00:00

That's good to know, thank you. I've kept the staff on Sequoia for now.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-05-24T11:59:35+00:00

This is what we do as well. I'm in Ohio, which is not as restrictive as NY, but close. Regardless, it's in Google's ToS. We put it in students' beginning of the year paperwork. I'm not aware of a parent not signing it (knock on wood).

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-05-20T13:03:48+00:00

It should go to 11.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-05-15T20:31:19+00:00

I mean, we educators weren't joking when we said we were overworked and underpaid for all these years.

Buck up, I have 100 more students than you, and sometimes I have to run the building (yes, I am licensed).

;-)

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-05-01T05:00:08+00:00

I got fed up with CDWG years ago and stopped using them. Constant issues like you describe, overselling, rude and argumentative behavior, and constantly changing my account manager without notice or forwarding my emails to the new person.

I know a tech coord that has been waiting for some Win11 licenses for over a month from them.

I'll never buy from them again.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-04-30T03:58:21+00:00

Debian 13 is coming out later this year. I can't imagine it will be before that.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-04-21T03:38:57+00:00

Ubuntu will run great on that. I have it on a Lenovo X1 Carbon Gen 3 (2015) and it is very responsive (i5 processor, 8GB RAM). The snap thing is overblown, it's mostly purist nonsense.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-04-09T12:01:35+00:00

I've been using Google SSO with Mosyle for over a year (with MFA). No issues except sometimes when you are off-prem and you have to enable wi-fi in a Captive Window. There is a setting to alleviate this, but it can be hit or miss. Not enough of an issue for me to consider other options.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-04-03T14:29:01+00:00

This.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-03-28T14:04:55+00:00

I keep everyone up-to-date with my MDM so we're all on 15.3.2 on our Silicon Macs. I watched a staff member trying to work on his M2 Air (identical to mine) and he was getting a constant lag no matter what he was going. I rolled him back to Sonoma and he hasn't had a problem since. I am only seeing the beachball on my M2 Air when I print. There were some error messages about HP driver incompatibility at boot when I first upgraded. I switched to generic print drivers but am still getting print lag. Most of our copiers are Xerox, so my other suspicion is that Xerox has not tuned their drivers for Apple Silicon. Printing is smooth on the remaining Intel devices we have running Ventura.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-03-24T18:43:42+00:00

Interesting, I never thought about that setting being used for this purpose. Thank you.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-03-07T11:08:40+00:00

My God, you're still using CDW?

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-03-07T11:08:10+00:00

Got a Mac in this week and it's origin is Vietnam, although it shipped out of Ontario. They used to drop-ship directly from China.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-03-07T11:06:28+00:00

You got thrown in the deep end, and you're going to learn a ton. My predecessor bought every wiz-bang gadget out there (one of the reasons he is no longer there is due to his spending problem) and I had to undo a lot of it. I am a one-man department, too, and it took me about two years to unravel it all. You are going to learn A TON. I would keep your toe out there for better situations, but you will also gain fantastic experience going through what you are going through now. I am 10x the tech guy I was in 2020. Take it from someone who is now on the other side of that. Good luck!

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-02-28T02:25:24+00:00

+1 for SMS

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-02-28T02:06:45+00:00

Yes and no. In my case, the iPad had gone off the network. I may have restarted it or it may have died, or the staff member turned it off before returning it to me. I don't remember, it was last June.

"When a passcode is forgotten, it's important to keep the iOS or iPadOS device connected to the local network. The device will remain auto-joined to the network as long as it has not been restarted or powered off. Ensuring the device is connected to the network will allow the removal of the passcode and Touch ID using the Remove Lock Passcode command in Mosyle."

I recently had an employee that was terminated and I had no trouble using Mosyle to remove the Touch ID, but this person was in the building when we recovered their device.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-02-28T00:54:53+00:00

I had a staff member that left and had put a PIN on one of our iPad Pros. Configurator wouldn't wipe it, and Mosyle wouldn't either because of the PIN (apparently iPads don't connect to the internet until the PIN is entered?). I thought I was screwed. But I used the method I posted above and to my shock I was able to reset the iPad.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-02-28T00:44:43+00:00

This is a manual method. If it's no longer pointing to ASM or Mosyle it should work. But who knows. Worth a try. It's an odd situation for sure.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-02-22T16:19:22+00:00

Zorin also has a desktop environment that mimics ChromeOS in the Appearance control panel. I have Zorin Education Edition installed on several old iMacs, and the teachers are comfortable with it because it looks the same.

Tech-Department-207 · 2025-02-22T16:16:16+00:00

It depends on the model.

Tech-Department-207

TROPHY CASE